Abstract
Seagrass meadows are highly productive habitats that support commercially and ecologically important fishes and invertebrates. However, evidence of fish-habitat relationships are seldom drawn from forereef seagrass meadows that are structurally simple in terms of species richness and relative size and, consequently, their role as habitats is unclear. In this study, fish-habitat relationships were examined in such meadows in the forereef seagrasses of Tinggi Island and Babi Besar Island, Malaysia, by documenting habitat complexity attributes (canopy height, shoot density and percent cover), distance to adjacent coral reefs, and water depth within 2×2 m quadrats. Fish assemblages were recorded using the Remote Underwater Video Station method. A total of 1166 individuals from 86 taxa were found and enumerated. This study showed that (1) fish density and species richness were significantly associated with seagrass percent cover alone; (2) commercially important carnivores formed the majority of the fish populations in the meadows, and (3) fish density and species richness were positively correlated with distance to the nearest adjacent coral reef, indicating the need to account for the effects of neighboring habitats in studies of this nature. Thus, structurally simple seagrass meadows are still important fish habitats, especially as feeding grounds for commercially significant carnivores.
About the authors
Nina Ann Jin Ho is a postgraduate student in University of Malaya. She received her early training in marine science from Borneo Marine Research Institute, University of Malaysia Sabah. She is a marine ecologist with working experience in marine tourism and conservation at Semporna Priority Conservation Area, Sulu-Sulawesi Marine Ecoregion. After years of working in the field, she has developed a special interest in reef fish ecology and fish habitat preferences in seagrass and coral reefs.
Jillian Lean Sim Ooi teaches at the Department of Geography, University of Malaya. She has a PhD in seagrass biogeography from the University of Western Australia for her work on the spatial patterns and processes of seagrass in Johor, Malaysia. Her current focus is on understanding how these meadows function as habitats for fish and as feeding grounds for dugongs and invertebrates.
Yang Amri Affendi is a research officer in the Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences (IOES) and prior to that was teaching young padawans the arts of coral reef ecology in the Institute of Biological Sciences (IBS), University of Malaya. Early in his career he submitted himself to the mud of mangrove ecology and then proceeded to dive into coral reef ecology, focusing on scleractinian coral ecophysiology. At present, he is trying to understand more of marine ecosystems connectivity and climate change impacts on scleractinian corals in the Johor Marine Parks, Malaysia.
Ving Ching Chong was a professor in the Institute of Biological Sciences (IBS) and former Head of Marine Connectivity Studies, Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences (IOES), University of Malaya. He is currently a research associate in the IBS after his retirement in 2016. VCC has a wide interest in mangrove and marine fisheries ecology, with current interests in ecosystems connectivity and conservation, food webs and trophodynamics, climate change and anthropogenic effects on marine systems, and the exploitation of marine microorganisms for aquaculture.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the University of Malaya Research Grant (RG200-12SUS) and Postgraduate Research Grant (PG053-2013B) for support of fieldwork and research materials, and the Department of Marine Park Malaysia for the research permit (JLTM630-7Jld.4(21)). We thank Lau CM, Ng KC, Chong WW, Yip MY, Ong GM, A. Rahman, and F. Mohamed for assisting in the field sampling. Appreciation to Then AYH for comments on the manuscript.
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/bot-2017-0115).
Article note
This article is related to special issue Seagrass research in Southeast Asia, published in Botanica Marina 2018, vol. 61, issue 3.
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